Romney: the Republican Walter Mondale

Jim Webb Democrats. Mike Huckabee Republicans. I could live with those crowds as the vital, imaginative center of the emerging American politics.

Jim Webb, big yes.
Mike Huck, a snake oil salesman. A very faulty messenger for a decent message.

You are right, the current Repocrats and Demopublicans configurations are obsolete.

Blue-color Dems have very little in common with Hollywood-University faculties-Gays-Class Action Suit lawyers.

Religious blue-color folks from South have nothing in common with Allan Greenspan-Larry Kudlow FreeMarketUberAlles Open Borderistas.
Or keyboard mechanized division of never-serving-but-always-willing-to-send-somebody-else-kids neocons.

Open Border issue cuts accross parties in exactly right place.
Free Trade cuts accross not very far from it.

These are roughly your future party configurations:
Patriotic, Americans come first, strong and confident America party

and

Do what feels good, Free Market, Open Borders, Gay marrige, In UN We Trust party.

Jorge Boosh and Clintons go the second party in company of Rudy and McCain.

Tancredo, Thompson, maybe Mitt join the first.

Another disturbing fact about Romney is his campaign debt. According to Open Secrets Romney as $17,350,000 in campaign debt and just $9,216,517 in cash on hand. The candidate with the next largest campaign debt is Clinton. She has about two million in debt but over $50 million in cash on hand. With the expection of irrelevant fringe candidates Gravel and Keyes, no other candidate has more debt than cash-on-hand except Romney. It's a small fact but one that leaves me to wonder if Romney could be trusted to balance the federal budget.

mik:

And we realize how successful (and correct) the America Firsters led by Charles Lindbergh were in the 1930s and 1940s in the profoundly isolationalist America you seem to advocate ...

President Pat Buchanan, anyone?

Sure, Scott, I guess there are a lot of Mexicans in Iowa.

Brooks does not imply Romney is responsible for the shrinking of the GOP coalition. He implies only that Romney has outslicked himself by glomming onto a coalition that is on the way out. Why is the coalition on the way out? As you say, the Bush foreign policy has been a disaster. Of course everything else about Bush has also been a disaster. I would suggest that the people responsible for the resulting wreck include not only the neocons but everyone who voted for Bush. Which would be, for the most part, the Republican Party.

You reap what you sow. The Republicans have severely injured our country and this year they will get a little bit of what's coming to them. It's just too bad the US, and much of the world, has had to suffer so much because of the selfishness and stupidity of the GOP.

I think the demise of the GOP could be a little premature. I remember back in 1996 and 2002, the death of the Democratic party was widely believed. I am not saying that we may not get our clock cleaned, but we don't know yet. Let's see how 2008 goes. 11 months is a long time in politics. I remember when people spoke of the GOP having a fillibuster proof majority back in 1995. I am not a fan of Romney either, I would prefer Thompson or McCain. Just remember that the one thing the GOP has going for it is that the Democrats are the competition. I am not ready to scream the sky is falling just yet.

Notice that Brooks states that the GOP candidate will have to offer “a new brand of Republicanism” without ever suggesting what that “new brand” should involve. (Hint: but of course, it’s to be more like Democrats, but he won’t say it.)

Whoever he is, Brooks hopes he'll bring the GOP from the hot ideas of the 1920s to those of, say, the 1970s. Rather than the 1870s. Or 1370s. :D

Notice also that he suggests it’s Romney’s fault for the “shrinking” of the Reagan coalition. That takes some chutzpah, but Brooks is up to it. That coalition has shattered due to the “invite the world, invade the world” Bush-neocon strategy, of which Brooks is a typical proponent.

More likely the shrinkage is due to the dwindling away of voters born before WW2, who defined themselves by the first half of the Cold War and the colonial-type castes and classes and arrangements of the society into which they were born. The numberical decline of the core will probably continue through the fading out of the Boomers, many of whom have clung to lesser forms of the same.

The shattering is, I think, due to the Nixon-created Republican coalition now having run dry. It has run out of factions that can make a convincing and broad claim of relevance. (Just look at the Republican Presidential field.) And so it's lost sway over the political center. Partys of the kind usually break up over their internal contradictions and lose or kick out the most problematic faction. E.g. the Dixiecrats in 1966/68.

Of course the Reagan coalition has been shrinking, and it’s a perfectly predictable result of opening the country to massive third-world immigration and their “path to solid Democrats”. A lot of elected Republicans are too dumb to figure this out, but not to worry, there won’t be too many of them in the near future. But being lectured by Brooks on all this is a bit much.

For some reason worth figuring out by the American Right, competent First World people have little desire to emigrate to the US anymore. In fact, trend is toward net emigration from the US to some western European countries soon (already the case for Ireland).

Yes, the 2008 elections look bad for Republicans- and 2010 looks bad for Republicans too. Aging out of the top echelons is definitely a factor. By 2012 Republicans could be pretty well reduced to being a Party dominant in the Deep South, Plains, and northern West.

I don't see how Huckfinnister is anything new ... looks pretty much like George Bush without the self-restraint to me.

Donny writes: "New, young people that do not see the world through Hollywood/East Coast pederasty and secular-socialist communism, are legion and growing."

I suppose he knows this intuitively because there is scant empirical evidence to support the claim. As for the hedonism of the after-Boomers generation, consider the market demand for all the vices, from drugs to pornography to abortion (the youngest of the Boomers are pretty much beyond the days of needing one.) At some point it may be useful for Donny to look up the work of that old Boomer icon, Walt Kelly, the creator of Pogo and the author of the famous line: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

When the final chapter of the definitive work on the Religious Right is written, the author will point to Cal Thomas and his observation that politics and religion are inherently incompatible. The work of religion is to change men's hearts and for that the law is a completely ineffective substitute for the Spirit. Most Americans know that you don't legislate morality, and every time it's tried, from John Cotton and his Puritan "City on a Hill" to Carrie Nation and the XVIII Amendment, to Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, it has been a failure.

Rod is right: Romney is literally the perfect Republican that the party would traditionally vote for. The reason that he's not an automatic shoe-in for the Republicans is that the Republican party has fallen to pieces.

No, Romney is not the perfect Republican. He has won 1 election in his career -- running as a moderate/liberal in Massachusetts. And that was only 6 years ago. Now he is taking campaign positions that, on paper, might be "perfect" for the GOP. But his fundamental weakness is that few voters take seriously his claim to be a sincere, principled conservative. He is almost transparently fake, a la John Edwards on the Democratic side.

The structural problem of the Republican coalition is real, but of course it is being grossly exaggerated in an electoral environment in which the GOP happens to be in a down mode. The party is nowhere close to "falling to pieces," and no amount of wishful thinking on the Left will make it so.

The Republicans face the same problem they have faced since 1992: Without the Soviet Union, the anticommunist hawkish foreign policy/defense positions which once glued together social conservatives and libertarians is gone. Multiculturalist rhetoric and left wing social policies (such as affirmative action) will draw those groups back together whenever Democrats are in the ascendancy -- which is why by far the best thing that could happen to the GOP's prospects for 2010 and 2012 would be a Hillary Clinton presidency with a Democratic Congress.

But without the need to stand resolutely against communism, conservatism lacks any positive vision that will keep its disparate elements united. Waging a "War on Terror" does not fill the void, and the misguided efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East actually divide the conservative coalition and drive its various components apart.

Now he is taking campaign positions that, on paper, might be "perfect" for the GOP. But his fundamental weakness is that few voters take seriously his claim to be a sincere, principled conservative.

This is, of course, totally different from the other elections, where voters were fooled by Bush and Bush and Reagan pretending to be sincere, principled conservatives. I'm not actually seeing that as a shortcoming of Romney per se, I'm seeing it as a new non-shortcoming of Republican voters.

The party is nowhere close to "falling to pieces," and no amount of wishful thinking on the Left will make it so.

Waging a "War on Terror" does not fill the void, and the misguided efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East actually divide the conservative coalition and drive its various components apart.

Have you considered why, as it is completely obvious to 75% of the people of the US that the wars in the middle east are not actually helping anything (Even most of the ones who think we should 'finish' Iraq admit it was a mistake, although possibly not visible in advance, and we certainly shouldn't invade anyone else.), why the Republican frontrunners still support said wars?

It's because your party is broken. Totally broken. It is operating on emotion and slogans instead of actual ideas. (Yes, the Dems rely on emotion also, but it's positive emotions instead of hate and fear, and that's just to be elected, not to actually govern.)

It is broken because it was made up of such random elements for so long that half the people running had to be a phony in some respect, and you haven't gotten a 'principled conservative' in a long time. As I've mentioned before, neither the Christian Right or the nutjobs or libertarians are 'conservative' at all, and, tada, the party is almost an empty shell.

And starting around 1994 or so, the only purpose of the GOP became power. Raw, naked power became an end unto itself. You just had to say the right words in front of the right audiences, and the other right words in front of the other audiences, all carefully constructed as to not conflict with each other, and you were in the club and Rich!

And then, in one of those things that's going to read a lot better in the history books than if you're living it, one of those things like the assassination of JFK being the thing that pushed the Civil Rights Act over the edge, you elected Bush. And completely exposed to the general population how broken the party was.

The Democrats, of course, are also broken, although in a totally different way. That party, however, can be fixed by slowly replacing them, whereas the GOP does not have that much time.

"And starting around 1994 or so, the only purpose of the GOP became power. Raw, naked power became an end unto itself. You just had to say the right words in front of the right audiences, and the other right words in front of the other audiences, all carefully constructed as to not conflict with each other, and you were in the club and Rich!"

Actually it started around 1980, when it started to be obvious that having supported the Vietnam War, and evaded actually serving in it [like Quayle and the rest of the GOP leadership born since 1945], was better than having opposed it and served in it, like Gore and Kerry.